Maricopa County feuds cost taxpayers $28 million

Legal bill tied to infighting may still rise by millions

Politically charged investigations and legal reprisals involving the Maricopa County's Sheriff's Office, County Attorney's Office and Board of Supervisors have cost taxpayers at least $28 million since the infighting began in 2008, and the tab is expected to grow by millions more before the disputes are resolved.

An Arizona Republic analysis found the costs were primarily incurred as the county defended itself, elected officials and other employees against lawsuits, investigations and legal claims related to the political scrapes.

It is based on payments by the county's Self-Insured Risk Trust Fund and the County Attorney's and Sheriff's offices from fiscal 2008 through April, the most recent month for which figures are available.

The costly infighting began when the Board of Supervisors voted to cut the sheriff's and county attorney's budgets in 2008, as the recession deepened.

Viewing the cuts as politically motivated restrictions on their power as elected officials, Sheriff Joe Arpaio and then-County Attorney Andrew Thomas responded with so-called government-corruption investigations. They filed criminal cases and federal racketeering lawsuits against county supervisors, as well as retired judges involved in some of the cases.

A cascade of defensive responses set off other legal battles: The supervisors took civil-litigation duties away from Thomas, while Arpaio filed a suit against the supervisors claiming they had usurped his authority over the criminal-justice computer system.

In addition to the dollars spent, the infighting has carried another cost: an erosion of public trust and confidence in government, said government-ethics and public-policy experts, who called the feuding without precedent among local governments nationwide.

"You represent the people who have elected you. And do you want them to feel that their representative can't be civil? Can't be collegial? Can't be rational?" said Judy Nadler, senior fellow in government ethics at Santa Clara University's Markkula Center for Applied Ethics.

County officials say the worst is behind them, noting several key players have been ousted.

But the county will continue to rack up a hefty legal tab at the expense of taxpayers as the legal actions now in the courts play out.

Several outstanding lawsuits filed by county supervisors, administrators and retired judges claiming damages related to the actions of Thomas and Arpaio could potentially cost taxpayers millions more. Those trials are scheduled through 2013.

Meanwhile, the county continues to pay for representation by outside counsel in several cases because conflicts of interest stemming from the battles prevent county attorneys from handling the cases.

To put the $28 million cost in the context of the county budget, it equals five years of salary for 87 nurses or 44 dentists at the Maricopa Integrated Health System, the county's hospital system, which is struggling to provide care for the Valley's poor and uninsured amid cuts to Medicaid.

The cost also surpasses the fiscal 2013 budgets of some county departments such as the Assessor's Office or the Elections Department.

In a year when several Valley cities and towns are bringing back employee raises, the county is entering a fifth consecutive year without merit-based pay increases and has since 2008 eliminated at least 103 positions.

John Chamberlin, political-science and public-policy professor at the University of Michigan's Gerald R. Ford School of Public Policy, said accountability for the costly infighting ultimately rests with voters.

"This is the kind of thing that drives voters nuts," he said. "It's bad behavior that seems to have no public interest attached to it. It's eating up money at a time when budgets are being cut, and people think there are much better uses of the funds."

The sheriff, the county attorney and three members of the Board of Supervisors are up for re-election this year. All but one face challengers. Thomas, a key player in the fights, resigned in 2010 to run unsuccessfully for higher office. He was disbarred in April for ethical misconduct relating to his investigations of county supervisors and retired judges.

Public officials involved in the internecine feuds now say there was little that they could have done to change how events -- and costs -- unfolded. Supervisor Andy Kunasek, one of three county supervisors targeted by the Thomas and Arpaio investigations, said the cost was incurred over five years and is a small percentage of the county's $2.3 billion annual budget.

Kunasek said much of that cost was unavoidable because the county had to mount defenses for its employees and elected officials.

The actions of Thomas and David Hendershott, a former Arpaio chief deputy considered the mastermind of several dubious investigations, "totally trashed" the separation of powers between elected offices, Kunasek said. "I don't think there's a lot that I could've done, we (supervisors) could've done," Kunasek said. "It was like a bad 'Law and Order' episode."

Arpaio maintained that he, too, was doing his job: "It's the nature of doing business. When you're trying to do your job, and sometimes people don't like it, and sometimes, they try to do lawsuits against you. ... We get allegations. We investigate those allegations. That's what I do."

The Republic's cost analysis did not include tangential legal cases or other issues that continue to fuel political conflicts at Maricopa County -- for example, issues related to the firing of Hendershott and two other deputies that cost the county at least $172,461.

That case included an internal investigation of the conduct that ultimately led to their firing and merit hearings for one deputy. It also included a $45,000 settlement with The Republic and 12 News over the Sheriff's Office's refusal to promptly turn over public records detailing that investigation.

Also not included in the tally was county officials' investigation into Sheriff's Office budgeting, which found $103.7 million in taxpayer money was misspent since 2004. The board froze some of the sheriff's funds in an effort to compel him to turn over financial records for review, becoming a central point in one of the legal battles between the supervisors and Arpaio.

County budget staff eventually used an accounting measure to balance the misspent money with surplus funds. But the county has spent at least $540,261 so far on extra staff to implement controls to make sure such misspending does not reoccur.

"The board, in my opinion, had no choice but to defend the county. People say, 'You defended yourselves,' but I say we defended the county," said Supervisor Mary Rose Wilcox, who recently was granted $975,000, plus attorneys fees and interest, to settle damage claims against Arpaio and Thomas.

Nadler, the ethicist, said elected officials should set good examples for staff and constituents. Regardless of who sued whom, each has the duty to speak up and try to resolve issues that could jeopardize public trust in government, she said.

She compared it to a family disputing a will: "You don't agree, so you sue your brother, your cousins. But it all comes out of the same pot."

The cost of infighting

Years of legal battles within the Maricopa County government have cost taxpayers at least $28,001,628, with more costs to come. The Arizona Republic analyzed what other county operations that amount could have paid for.

Maricopa is the fourth-most-populous county in the nation, with 3.8 million residents and an annual budget of $2.3 billion.

It has about 50 agencies and departments overseeing everything from autopsies and jails to air quality and flood control.

The amount it has spent so far on its legal battles could pay for one of the following:

Five years' salary for 156 Sheriff's Office detention officers, at the lowest hourly rate paid in fiscal 2010 without benefits.

Five years' salary for 25 psychiatrists, without benefits, at county Correctional Health Services, which provides health care for county jail inmates, a population vulnerable to mental illness and substance-abuse issues.

At least two years' worth of flu vaccines at Valley schools, vaccinating enough children to achieve immunity for all county residents, based on county standards. It would result in hundreds fewer deaths, more than 90 percent fewer flu cases, thousands fewer hospitalizations and $100 million to $500 million in health-care savings per flu season.

Slightly more than half of the projected $52.5 million property-tax revenue shortfall for fiscal 2013.